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Tom Cotton blasts Biden over SVB bailout, economic turmoil that created collapse: His ‘failures all the way’

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Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., spoke with Maria Bartiromo on ‘Sunday Morning Futures’ where he criticized Biden policies for creating perfect conditions for SVB’s collapse…
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Golf legend John Daly texting Arkansas coach tips amid March Madness run

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Arkansas men’s basketball coach Eric Musselman said John Daly’s been texting him drills for his players to do. The Razorbacks upset Kansas on Saturday…
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Dem senator calls on law enforcement to ‘pay attention’ to Trump protests ahead of potential arrest

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Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., says Trump supporters have a right to peacefully protest if the former president is arrested, but he urged law enforcement to “pay attention…
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NCAA Division III school wins national championship on wild buzzer beater

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Trey Barber answered the call for Christopher Newport University on Saturday as he delivered the buzzer-beater against Mount Union for the D-3 championship…
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Pennsylvania woman mauled to death while feeding neighbor’s dogs as young son looks on: police

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Kristin Potter, 38, of Centre Township in Perry County, Pennsylvania, was fatally mauled by her neighbor’s two Great Danes, who reportedly attacked her while she fed them…
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Rolling Loud Abruptly Cancels Its Upcoming New York 2023 Event

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Rolling Loud abruptly canceled

Photo Credit: MTV International / CC by 3.0

Rolling Loud abruptly cancels its upcoming New York 2023 event, citing logistical factors as the primary reason, but vows to return “when the time is right.”

Festival organizers announced on Twitter that Rolling Loud would not return to New York in 2023, citing “logistical factors” as the primary reason. That said, organizers said that “this isn’t ‘goodbye,’ more like ‘see you later.’ We’ll be back in New York when the time is right.” The next US Rolling Loud festival will take place in Miami in July.

“For the last few years, we’ve made some legendary moments happen in Queens,” reads the statement. “We saw the beginning of the King Vamp era, Travis power through his full set through the pain, Carti and Uzi reuniting on stage, Nicki, 50 Cent, and A$AP Rocky putting on iconic headlining performances in their hometown, Juice WRLD’s final festival performance, and many, many more moments.”

“Sadly, due to logistical factors beyond our control, Rolling Loud will not return to New York in 2023. But don’t worry, this isn’t ‘goodbye,’ more like ‘see you later.’ We’ll be back in New York when the time is right. In the meantime, we invite all of our New York fans to meet us in Miami July 21-23 for our biggest, best festival of the year. Love you all! Rolling Loud forever!”

Beginning in 2015, Rolling Loud has become one of hip-hop’s premiere festivals, with top-tier artists including Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Post Malone, 50 Cent, A$AP Rocky, Nicki Minaj, and many more. The festival expanded its reach beyond Miami to touch down in cities like New York and Los Angeles, with Rolling Loud California 2023 featuring headliners Future, Travis Scott, and Playboi Carti.

Rolling Loud will also expand internationally with forthcoming events in Germany, Portugal, and Thailand. Its next stateside event will occur in Miami in July, but a roster of slated performances has yet to be announced.

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Chrissie Hynde Says the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Has ‘Absolutely Nothing To Do With Rock & Roll’

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Chrissie Hynde

Photo Credit: Raph_PH / CC by 2.0

Chrissie Hynde writes a dismissive Facebook post about the Rock Hall on the tail of Courtney Love’s scathing op-ed review of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame institution.

For some artists, recognition by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is an honor symbolizing their achievement as a musician. But for Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde, the whole thing “is total bollocks.” On Friday, after Hole frontwoman Courtney Love posted a scathing op-ed review of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — which followed her Instagram carousel about it earlier in the week — Chrissie Hynde took to Facebook to share her thoughts on the institution.

“It’s just more establishment backslapping,” wrote Hynde. “I got in a band so I didn’t have to be part of all that.”

The singer says that when she learned her band was being inducted into the class of 2005, her heart sank.

“I knew I’d have to go back for it as it would be too much of a kick in the teeth to my parents if I didn’t,” she explains. “I’d upset them enough by then, so it was one of those things that would bail me out from years of disappointing them.”

Aside from Neil Young’s generous induction speech, Hynde says the “whole thing was, and is, total bollocks. It’s absolutely nothing to do with rock n’ roll, and anyone who thinks it is is a fool.”

Courtney Love’s Guardian op-ed criticized the Rock Hall’s lack of female representation, stating that just 8.48% of inductees are women and that only nine women are seated on the organization’s nomination board. Love also noted the astounding length of time for some legendary women musicians to be nominated or inducted, in addition to some glaring omissions she points to in calling into question the “ol’ boys club.”

“If so few women are being inducted into the Rock Hall, then the nominating committee is broken. If so few Black artists, so few women of color, are being inducted, then the voting process needs to be overhauled,” writes Love. “Music is a life force that is constantly evolving — and they can’t keep up.”

Love notes that more women were nominated this year than at any other time in the organization’s 40-year history, including Kate Bush, Cyndi Lauper, Sheryl Crow, and Missy Elliott. However, Kate Bush is on her fourth nomination but didn’t make it onto a ballot until 2018, after the Hall of Fame’s co-founder and Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner was inducted in 2004.

“Never mind that she was the first woman in pop history to have written every track on a million-selling debut,” says Love of Bush’s The Kick Inside, released in 1978. “A pioneer of synthesizers and music videos, she was discovered last year by a new generation of fans when ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’ featured in the Netflix hit Stranger Things. She is still making albums.”

“The Rock Hall has covered itself in a sheen of gravitas and longevity that the Grammys do not have,” Love adds. “Particularly for veteran female artists, induction confers a status that directly affects the living they are able to make.”

“The Rock Hall’s canon-making doesn’t just reek of sexist gatekeeping, but also purposeful ignorance and hostility,” Love concludes. “If the Rock Hall is not willing to look at the ways it is replicating the violence of structural racism and sexism that artists face in the music industry, if it cannot properly honor what visionary women artists have created, innovated, revolutionized and contributed to popular music — well, then let it go to hell in a handbag.”

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Jim Gordon, Drummer for Eric Clapton — And Convicted Murderer — Dies at 77

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Jim Gordon dies

Photo Credit: Carlos Coronado

Jim Gordon, drummer for Eric Clapton and George Harrison, convicted of murdering his mother in 1983, has died at 77.

Jim Gordon, a top drummer for Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos, George Harrison, and many others, has died at 77. Gordon reportedly died Monday of natural causes at California Medical Facility in Vacaville after a lengthy incarceration and lifelong battle with mental illness.

A member of Clapton’s band, Derek and the Dominos, Gordon is credited as co-writer of the 1970 classic, “Layla.” He played on hundreds of songs as part of the group of elite session musicians known as The Wrecking Crew. 

Born in 1945, Jim Gordon was raised in California’s San Fernando Valley. He began playing drums as a child, playing with rock bands and the Burbank Symphony as a teenager. He was offered a music scholarship to UCLA but instead joined the Everly Brothers for an overseas tour after graduating high school in 1963.

Gordon played on countless rock songs throughout the 1960s and ’70s, including hits from the Beach Boys, George Harrison, Steely Dan, Carly Simon, John Lennon, Gordon Lightfoot, Sonny and Cher, Nancy Sinatra, Tom Waits, Tom Petty, Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, The Byrds — even the Incredible Bongo Band’s 1972 song “Apache,” featuring one of the most sampled drum breaks in hip-hop. He toured with artists like Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and Derek and the Dominoes.

Arguably one of the greatest rock drummers of his era, unfortunately, Gordon’s lifelong and inadequately treated mental illness combined with substance abuse resulted in his assaulting at least two girlfriends in the ’70s. While he received outpatient treatment for his condition on more than one occasion, his erratic behavior and paranoia persisted.

After weeks of threatening behavior, Gordon bludgeoned and stabbed his 72-year-old mother to death on June 3, 1983, claiming that voices told him to do so. He was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia and sentenced to 16 years to life in prison in 1984. Gordon was up for parole multiple times in the following years but was denied.

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When Is Spotify HiFi Coming, Exactly? — Spotify Won’t Say

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Spotify HiFi coming soon

Photo Credit: Behnam Norouzi

Spotify announced its high-definition music service ‘Spotify HiFi’ over two years ago. Yet it hasn’t materialized. Spotify wont’ say why—but the answer is Apple.

In 2021, Spotify was prepping to launch a premium tier of audio called Spotify HiFi. Then Apple Music rolled out its spatial audio streaming at no additional cost and Spotify shrunk back into the shadows. Two years on, Spotify still hasn’t figured out how to adapt without charging more for something a competitor offers in its base plan. That analysis is pretty much confirmed in a recent The Verge interview with Spotify’s Gustav Söderström.

“We announced [Spotify HiFi], but then the industry changed for a bunch of reasons,” Söderström says. “We are going to do it, but we’re going to do it in a way where it makes sense for us and our listeners. The industry changed, and we had to adapt.” The Verge presses Söderström to reveal more information, but he can’t for obvious reasons. 

“We want to do it in a way where it works for us from a cost perspective as well. I’m not allowed to comment on our label agreements, nor on what other players in the industry did,” he told The Verge. Söderström went on to say while he won’t give a specific date when it could arrive that it’s a firm “we’re going to do it.”

Söderström says Spotify HiFi will be a way for the company to “try and do something that is our own and unique.” So Spotify HiFi is still coming but it’s unclear how it will take shape. That’s especially true when Amazon Music and Apple Music both offer high-fidelity audio quality with no additional premium. A Spotify HiFi lossless type experience is coming at some point, we just don’t know when. 

With Spotify’s most recent redesign, it seems as though the company is pivoting to bring video to the forefront of its platform. Beyond just offering music, audiobooks, and podcasts under the umbrella—it wants to chase the TikTok lightning, too. 

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Italian Society of Authors and Publishers Works Pulled From Meta Platforms Amid Licensing Dispute

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Venice, Italy. Photo Credit: canmandawe

Facebook parent Meta has pulled the works of Italian creators over a rights-related dispute, according to the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers (SIAE), which says that its members are “bewildered” by the “unilateral decision.”

The European Grouping of Societies of Authors and Composers (GESAC), which counts SIAE as a member, reached out to DMN with word of the purported takedowns (extending to all European nations and certain international markets) today. At the time of this writing, however, Meta – which announced 10,000 additional layoffs on Tuesday – didn’t appear to have commented on the matter via an official update.

In any event, SIAE in a formal release indicated that it had for some time been negotiating a new agreement with Meta, after their prior deal expired at 2023’s beginning. But the Instagram owner is said to have forwarded a “unilateral proposal” to SIAE and called on the more than century-old organization to accept the lump-sum framework without a “transparent and shared evaluation of the actual value of the repertoire” at hand.

Needless to say, given the current impasse, SIAE didn’t accept the alleged proposal, instead describing Meta’s stance as “in contrast with the principles established by the” EU’s highly controversial Copyright Directive.

“This position, along with Meta’s refusal to share relevant information for a fair agreement, is evidently in contrast with the principles established by the Copyright Directive for which authors and publishers across Europe have strongly advocated,” the society communicated. “SIAE will not accept impositions from an entity that exploits its position of strength to obtain savings at the expense of the Italian creative industry.”

SIAE elaborated upon the circumstances surrounding the music pulldowns (specifically affecting “all works directly managed by SIAE, except those obtained through sub-licensing,” per higher-ups) when contacted by DMN. According to this more detailed account of the situation, the WhatsApp owner provided a “‘take it or leave it’” contract, “threatening to remove the content if the offer was not accepted.”

“However, SIAE had always officially communicated to Meta of the impossibility to accept the offer since Meta had never shared the fundamental information necessary for a fair negotiation,” the Italian organization reiterated. “Furthermore, Meta refused to share information requested by the European Copyright Directive, citing its internal policies as the reason for the impediment.

“Meta justified its inability to increase the economic offer with the explanation of a budget limit,” SIAE stated. “However, the budget defined by Meta was determined unilaterally and insufficiently, and Meta in any case always refused to apply the MFN [most-favored-nation] clause to ensure SIAE a fair treatment and creators a fair remuneration.”

Moving forward, SIAE said that it hopes “Meta will reconsider its position and be more open to discussion and [the] sharing of necessary information to restart negotiations.” Meta didn’t respond to a request for comment in time for publishing. But this latest rights-related dispute arrives after the company put to rest a separate disagreement with Kobalt Music last year, when a trial date was set for an infringement suit levied by Epidemic Sound.

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